Everybody knows about Thermaltake, but most people don't know that this heatsink manufacturer also makes 1U heatsinks. Like a good desktop heatsinks, 1U heatsinks work best when they are designed to be super efficient, and use the best possible materials.

This
particular cooler, the Thermaltake DTFCF014-1 (which we will be calling the 1U Extruded after its aluminum construction) is really only good for older 1U servers with processors producing less than 50W of heat.

It's somewhat difficult to
really say whether or not the Thermaltake 1U Extruded heatsink would
be better or worse off without the fan. Considering that all 1U server cases will have
some type of cooling fan to keep the hard drives and other IC's within
spec, is the little 60mm fan really necessary?

After all, those little server cooling fans can produce a good steady flow of
air, which the 1U heatsink here could take advantage of for cooling as long as
the socket is orientated the right way. So the question that has been in the
back of my mind is whether Themaltake would have been better off not cutting
away part of the fins and leaving the fan out of the picture entirely.

It's a tough call, but if it were a passive heatsink, the orientation of the
motherboard socket would be the be all and end of this heatsink. That's
something to think about at least, but let's move forward and take a good close
look at Thermaltake's DTCFCF014-1 1U heatsink.

Thermaltake DTCFCF014-1 Heatsink From
All Angles

The Fan: A very thin 10mm thick 60mm fan is used on the Thermaltake 1U Extruded. The fan only draws about 0.2A, so it produces a moderate amount of flow which need only penetrate 10mm of fin before the base is reached. The fan is connected to the motherboard via a 3-pin power connector with RPM monitoring.

Heatsink Top:Recessed within the fins themselves, the fan
does not
add any height to the heatsink and keeps the mounting clip in place. To keep
things very simple, the fan is simply mounted to the fins with
a few screws. This distorts the fins, but shouldn't really impact the
overall airflow characteristics to any large degree.

Side A:With a height of 27mm, the Thermaltake
1U extruded heatsink is really low profile. The down side to a heatsink
with fins only 19mm tall, is that surface area is
limited. However, since 1U servers are only leave about 28mm distance between the top of
the processor and the top of the case there isn't much one can do.The clip is easy to engage with
a screwdriver.

Side B: The fins are smooth, and 75mm long.
Within the heatsink there are exactly 33 fins. Each fin is barely 0.5mm thick at the tip, and just slightly
larger at the top. The fins are 20mm in height, and
the base is about 7mm thick (pretty standard). Fin spacing sits
at 1.0mm.

Heatsink Base:The base finish on Thermaltake's 1U
extruded is pretty smooth. Perhaps it has been sanded after it left the
extrusion die, or perhaps not at the flatness is not 100 % in both directions. Most extruded heatsinks
are very slightly concave across the width of the heatsink. A yellow thermal pad is
pre-applied to the base to even things up for the processor core.